Re: ID
Re: ID stone beads, help please . Bead 1 -- karavanserai Post Reply Edit Forum Where am I?
Posted by: Beadman Post Reply
12/23/2018, 14:02:22

I suspect these are what is routinely called "sea sediment jasper."

This is a recent Chinese product that has evolved out of the fake-turquoise industry.

As mentioned a few years ago by me, Chinese manufacturers can now take different materials and treat them to become very hard. So hard they seem very stone-like. They even do this to soft non-precious coral (as I demonstrated).

The turquoise fakes are composed from magnesite and reconstructed magnesite, that has been color-enhanced (often just dyed), and hardened. These undergo additional treatments to make them more turquoise-like—including creating "veins" or "matrix," and crackling the material to (supposedly) make the beads seem "old."

In the case of "sea sediment jasper" (as near as I can tell), I believe they are taking reconstructed stone, crushing it to large and small fragments, ** and then reconstructing these pieces by placing them into a melange of reconstructive medium. Then (or somewhere in the process) the resulting material is colored (if it isn't yet, or if additional colors are desired) and it's hardened. Whereupon it has to be exploited like any mineral—being roughed-out, shaped, polished, and drilled. This is something the Chinese excel at performing in mass quantities.

Essentially, this is a strategy someone might come up with in oder to make an imitation of brecciated jasper. So, one could say that "sea sediment jasper" is FAKE BRECCIATED JASPER, that is artificially brecciated, from highly manipulated reconstructed mineral compositions.

The beads seen in replies also look like the "SSJ" beads from China, that are routinely available online. Just a few years ago, we had some dialogues about the fact that Chinese beads are now making their way into West African constructions. This is just another example.

Jamey



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